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The Mystery German Who Might Be the Start of Something Big - Monday Morning Quarterback

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Boehringer only took up the game four years ago, after watching YouTube clips of Adrian Peterson.
Four weeks earlier, Boehringer was a mechanical engineering student in Aalen, Germany, who drove 50 kilometers each way to practice American football once a week. Now he has a very real chance to be the first international player drafted into the NFL without having played college football. Who is he, and how did he get here?
The answer involves a two-time Super Bowl champion and a league intent on making American football a global sport.
Mortiz is impressing.6ft4225lbs40-yard dash - 4.42.That is FAST.pic.twitter.com/7kpb0hPMzh
— NFL UK (@NFLUK) March 31, 2016
* * *
The story begins in London, at one of the NFL’s four branch offices outside the borders of the U.S. Last September, at the NFL UK office just off Oxford Circus, a new employee was banging his fist on the table—figuratively, we think—for a change to the league’s international strategy. “There is no way you can grow the game internationally,” Osi Umenyiora said that day, “unless you have international players.”
Just one week earlier the former NFL pass rusher had retired from a 12-year career that included two Super Bowls with the Giants. Umenyiora was born in London and raised in Nigeria, but his family moved to the U.S. when he was in high school, and he was drafted into the league after playing college football at Troy University in Alabama. He wanted to tap into the thousands of players competing in American football leagues in more than two dozen countries across the European continent, and beyond. “OK,” he was told. “Go find them.”
Photo: Charlie Crowhurst/Getty Images
Umenyiora (in red, with Stephen Tulloch) played twice at Wembley, for the Giants and Falcons, and now works with NFL UK.
The NFL’s international strategy the past several years has been to grow a fan base and media coverage outside the U.S. by staging big-scale, premium events. The International Series, started in 2007, has expanded from one regular-season game a year at Wembley Stadium to four foreign games this coming season, three in London and one in Mexico City. Amateur participation in American football has grown in the U.K., and there are a handful of Europe-born NFL players who are ambassadors for the game—New England’s Sebastian Vollmer, Oakland’s Menelik Watson and Miami’s Jay Ajayi.
But there’s a wide gap between the NFL’s international showcase events and the grassroots growth of the sport outside the U.S. Bridging that was Umenyiora’s vision. “Yao Ming is what blew up basketball in China,” Umenyiora says. “People are nationalistic. They want to see their own countrymen doing well. You can’t grow the game in England if you don’t have British players. You can’t grow the game in China, like really grow it, if you don’t have Chinese players.”
Photo: Tony Gutierrez/AP
Efe Obada, a former London warehouse worker, spent 2015 on the Cowboys’ practice squad and is now signed with the Chiefs.
Easier said than done. American football is still a niche sport in Europe, and the highest level of football overseas is akin to perhaps Division III in the States. As The MMQB saw on our tour of Europe last summer, the...http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/04/13/nfl-draft-2016-who-german-prospect-moritz-boehringer

Driving Germany's 'Romantic Road' - Condé Nast Traveler

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Main to the Alps in the 1950s, when it needed a bit of post-war positivity; it's said the earliest visitors were "friends and families of American soldiers stationed in the large bases in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg." Americans still flock here, as do Asians, Europeans, and even Germans themselves, and though main attractions can get crowded, there are more than enough quiet corners of castles and cobblestoned alleys in 12th-century towns for everybody.The Trip: Three days, 285 milesStarting in Munich, head southwest toward Füssen at the beginning (or end) of the Romantic Road, and from there, go north to the wine city of Würzburg.What to DriveFor the love of all that is good and muscle-bound, please rent a fast German car. A BMW, an Audi, a Mercedes—doesn't matter. Just pick one and don't let the rental car company try to give you something compact. You'll be on the Autobahn for the initial stretch of the drive out of Munich, and you'll feel safer in a ride with a big engine when everyone else is going 120 mph. Plus, who goes "wooo!" in a Geo on the Autobahn?Day 1: Follow the commuters zooming south out of Munich on A96 toward Füssen and, nearby, King Ludwig II's Neuschwanstein Castle in Schwangau, known as the real-life inspiration for Disney's Sleeping Beauty palace. The 19th-century Romanesque Revival up on the hills does set the fairy-tale tone for this 285-mile ride, though before that, the drive is all highway, all business. You can either start the touristing straight a...

Why Germany comes alive with religious bombast on Fronleichnam

Saturday, June 24, 2017

The first Fronleichnam procession was held in the year 1270.Where is it celebrated?
If you are lucky enough to live in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate or North Rhine-Westphalia, you have a holiday on Thursday because of Fronleichnam. If you live anywhere else, more fool you for picking a part of Germany where Martin Luther got the upper hand.A water based parade in Staffelsee, Bavaria. Photo:: DPAWhen is it celebrated?
Fronleichnam is always celebrated on the second Thursday after Whitsun. It is really a sort of delayed celebration of the Last Supper which took place on Maundy Thursday. According to Dom Radio, the radio station of the Cologne Cathedral, celebrating the fest on Maundy Thursday wouldn’t befit the reflective nature of Easter.
Catholics in states that don’t have a public holiday have their processions on the following weekend.How is it celebrated?
Differently in different places. In Fritzlar in north Hesse, the celebrations start on Wednesday night with the so-called Katzenkoppschießen. During this ceremony, the eight bells of the town cathedral are rung and a canon is fired, a ritual that is repeated three times.
In Cologne, there is a procession involving over 100 ships, while in Bamberg 18 men carry a huge cross through the town.A floral carpet in Hüfingen, Baden-Württemberg. Photo: DPA
Generally the fest is celebrated with processions in which believers carry an ornately decorated monstrance with a sacred Eucharist wafer through the streets.
The towns of Hüfingen and Mühlenbach are renowned for their carpets made of flowers, which decorate the route of the procession and stretch to 100 metres in length.
It is also common for flags to festoon the route of the procession, while processions often visit alters along the way.The political dimension
According to Dom Radio, the processions have often had a subversive element. The extrovert and bombastic character was meant to show Protestants how great it is to be a Catholic. Luther, for his part, described th...http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=0618E6A2D6B140F8A3A78CEA5AF06F10&url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.thelocal.de%2f20170615%2fwhy-germany-comes-alive-with-religious-bombast-on-fronleichnam&c=647116908274741890&mkt=en-us